Dr. Keith Smith is a board certified anesthesiologist and co-founder of The Surgery Center of Oklahoma.  He shows why eliminating barriers between patients and doctors improves health and saves lives.  He argues that governors, federal health officials, and other key government actors should step up today to permanently acknowledge the devastating role government interference has played in reducing access to care, stifling innovation, and preventing entrepreneurship.  Dr. Smith has made appearances on the John Stossel Show, CNBC, Huffington Post, The O’Reilly Factor, Capital Account with Lauren Lyster, and the Ron Paul Channel.  The New York Times, ABC News, Forbes, and many others have written articles featuring Dr. Smith’s revolutionary approach to the pricing of health care and uncompromising free market principles.  

https://www.insidesources.com/doctors-must-lead-post-covid-19-reforms/

Doctors Must Lead Post-COVID Reforms

By Dr. G. Keith Smith

The COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating repercussions will be felt across America for years. “Inevitable” millions of deaths didn’t materialize despite what politicians, public health experts, and their sheep in the press told us. What did come were lockdowns which may result in more deaths than the pandemic due to mental health issues, trillions in economic damage, and the disruption of a generation’s education.

As always, the “inevitable” apocalypse prediction was wrong. But as politicians ruined lives and futures, they accidentally did something right – they showed how the government-medical industrial complex has for decades separated patients from their doctors, making the medical care provided by physicians harder, more expensive, and less effective.

A prime example of this is the hydroxychloroquine study which Lancet published in May…and retracted in early June due to shoddy and possible unethical data-gathering practices. This study was pushed like wildfire through the press as evidence that Americans would need to wait months or years to be vaccinated against coronavirus. The result was the destruction of credibility held by hydroxychloroquine advocates and a boost for non-generic, big pharma solutions.  More ominously, the World Health Organization and other groups halted research because of the study – an unacceptable delay because of the “inevitable” doctrine which said only vaccines developed by the government-stamped pharma groups would suffice.

Delays like this one are literally killing people. It took weeks for the Food & Drug Administration to allow the private sector to develop testing. In the meantime, the Center for Disease Control was botching its own contaminated batches of tests. And people died because millions of Americans who could have been tested were left to spread COVID-19 to their elderly and immune-compromised friends, family members, and neighbors.

States are hardly better, although forward-thinking governors did relax unnecessary telemedicine restrictions and allowed doctors to quickly and affordably transfer their skills and licenses between states. While a good start, these measures are only temporary – even as these politicians have tacitly and sometimes explicitly admitted that overregulation – known by medical professionals as “choice restriction” and “barriers between doctors and patients” –was preventing medical professionals from saving lives.

Call it “deregulation” or call it “allowing doctors to do their jobs.” Either way, every American should support government uninviting itself from the medical innovation party. If you support hydroxychloroquine’s use for COVID-19-infected patients, and it really works, the private sector should be empowered to use it as much as necessary. And if it doesn’t, the private sector should be empowered to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible instead of being held up by red tape which lines Big Pharma’s pockets at the expense of average people’s lives.

Eliminating barriers between patients and doctors improves health and saves lives. Governors, federal health officials, and other key government actors should step up today to permanently acknowledge the devastating role government interference has played in reducing access to care, stifling innovation, and preventing entrepreneurship.

In February, we all watched politicians and “experts” declare that millions of lives would inevitably be lost. But as our nation opens anew, we can see how fear and disastrous inevitability became resoluteness and opportunity. America didn’t stay crouched in fear; we turned apocalyptic predictions on their heads. Now is the time to continue that trend by embracing innovation as the future of medical care.

—Dr. G. Keith Smith is a board certified anesthesiologist and co-founder of The Surgery Center of Oklahoma.

 

Items discussed on today's show:

The Milgram Experiment  https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html